Archive for the 'Best Of' Category

In the software world they talk about too many features making it into a product thereby diluting its core functionality. This makes the software experience confusing and less valuable to its users. The term for this is feature creep. The same can be said of ambition–there are so many things to do with our lives and we can’t possibly do all of them well. We may try though, and at a certain point we can lose focus and stray from both what we’re good at and what we really enjoy. Then, looking back, we might wonder whether it was worth it to start down so many paths rather than traveling far on one of them. I feel like I’m constantly subjected to this ambition creep.

Last year I redid this blog and started technotheory, hired two new people, refocused the business on Office design as much as Office training. And personally I joined two new book clubs and resolved to hold some sort of party once per month. Here I am in May of 2007 with all these new things to maintain that I still believe in, and I want to do so much more. I want to start a social group in DC that’s passionate about technology more in the way people are in the Bay Area. Next month I start a series of business-oriented classes with the Board of Trade. I want to hire more people. Oh, and I want to take guitar lessons, dance lessons, and an extended vacation. By the way, there’s that new Murakami book, The Four Hour Work Week, the new CS3 suite to play with, and… (more…)

I wonder whether most people think of themselves as lucky. There are times when I’d like things to be just a little different, but overall I struggle to find occasions when things didn’t work out well for me. But I know of many friends who don’t seem to look at themselves as particularly lucky. I wonder whether most people consider themselves lucky, and how that affects the way they live…

I have friends who have lived through awful circumstances. The girl who, in every relationship, gets cheated on in unpredictable & heinous ways. The friend with multiple advanced degrees who is continually pushed away from her life mission by being passed over by medical schools. Or, much worse, the friend who at 23 has been through the death of her two most serious boyfriends.

Perhaps one could respond that these people are not the ones who are truly suffering, and that they’re generally lucky to have certain privileges and all of their basic needs met. But I’m not looking to debate the priorities or definition of “luck” for people who are well-off, just to question how life treats people, regardless of their frame of reference.

A recently-single friend sent me an article from The Atlantic about online dating sites. Lori Gottlieb interviews the founders of eHarmony and quickly moves on to Chemistry.com, which was apparently started to find not just compatible people, but those who actually click:

On most of the other sites, there’s this notion of ‘fitness matching’: You may have the same goals, intelligence, good looks, political beliefs. But you can walk into a room, and every one of those boys might come from the same background, have the same level of intelligence, and so on, and maybe you’ll talk to three but won’t fall in love with any of them. And with the fourth one, you do. What creates that chemistry? (Dr. Helen Fisher)